Chianello: Lessons from the OMB

OTTAWA — It’s not very often that the Ontario Municipal Board sides with the community instead of city planners. So when the provincial body last week agreed with neighbours who argued that 14- and 16-storey towers were too tall for a residential street in northeastern Westboro, well, people were stunned.

However, the board did more than just rule against the city’s recommendation for the Roosevelt Avenue rezoning — it disparaged the city’s planning department for failing to follow its own policies.

OMB member Marc Denhez did allow that “existing planning documents are inconsistent”, ruling that developer Uniform Urban Developments could build up to eight storeys — slightly higher than the four-to-six floors that the current zoning calls for but nowhere near 16.

But Denhez followed that up with the particularly damning finding that “though staff addressed many individual components of the project, the rationale for changing the mid-rise skyline itself was not just flawed; it was non-existent. That slate was blank; and although it could have been corrected at the hearing, it was not.”

In other words, in the OMB’s view, Ottawa’s planning department didn’t have a policy leg to stand on.

This decision provides a number of lessons, while raising disconcerting questions too.

The first and most obvious is that, as critics have long contended, at least some city planners recommend rezonings without due regard for the city’s policies. There is just no other way to read the OMB decision. And that is unacceptable. Sure, there have been inconsistencies in the various planning blueprints for this city — inconsistencies that are supposed to be cleared up with the updated official plan — but why is it that Ottawa’s own planners can see their way clear to recommending a rezoning to double the height, while the OMB will only allow an additional two storeys?

And one has to wonder how many other times a city planner has disregarded (or bent) policy in giving a stamp of approval to a higher-than-allowed building. After all, not every rezoning decision is appealed to the OMB. Not all residents have the wherewithal to challenge a city decision before the OMB or raise thousands of dollars to hire experts to argue the case. (The inherent unfairness of a situation that calls for community members to take on developer and city lawyers is another issue altogether.)

The OMB decision also underlines council’s responsibility in understanding and applying the city’s own policies. It’s appropriate for council to take the city staff’s recommendations seriously. And in matters of rezonings, this council has been understandably reluctant to vote against city planners’ recommendations. When councillors have done so in the past and a developer appealed the decision to the OMB, the city found itself in the awkward position of having to argue against its own planners. It was a messy situation that usually ended up in the OMB overturning council’s decision.

Still, that does not completely excuse our elected officials. Yes, planning policies are confusing. Trying to make sense of the official and secondary community design plans, not to mention spot rezonings, section 37s and the Provincial Policy Statement, can turn one’s brain to water. But it’s councillors’ job to understand complex policies, to question staff when something doesn’t make sense — and then to question them some more when the answer doesn’t seem quite right.

All this only strengthens the case for more transparency in the city’s planning process, an ongoing issue that is surely to be part of this fall’s election campaign in the inner-city wards experiencing the most intensification. Even Coun. Peter Hume, the chair of the planning committee, admitted recently that more could be done to make planning more open. He recently mused, for example, that community associations could perhaps attend preconsultation meetings between developers and city planners. Great idea! If nothing untoward is being discussed at preconsultations, then why not?

A more open process might not have stopped Uniform from applying for that Roosevelt rezoning in Westboro. But having the community involved earlier in the process would have meant more back-and-forth between residents and the builder, and would have forced the city’s own planner to more clearly make the policy case for recommending the extra height.

Then perhaps everyone could have avoided a costly appeal, which resulted in an embarrassing decision for the city’s planning department.

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